At this point the Rev. John’s cough became consumptive in its hollow persistency, and he was heard to murmur something to the effect that Herr von Arnim would no doubt like to be shown to his room. Herr von Arnim appeared to be afflicted with deafness. He looked down at Mrs. Ingestre, meeting her frank inspection with steady, laughing eyes. "I am not anything to look at—especially in these clothes," he said naïvely. "I don’t think even Nora could have said that I was handsome. So you must not judge by appearances. After a time you will know what I really am, and I hope you will like me." "If I can trust Nora’s description I do that already," Mrs. Ingestre answered, "but, more than Nora, more than experience, I trust my own eyes. And I think"—she paused, and the smile that crept about her lips lit up her whole face, and made it almost young and very beautiful—"I think I shall be happy to give my Nora to you, Wolff." The cough and its owner had departed in despair. Miles, finding himself ignored, skulked sulkily in the passage. Wolff bent and kissed the white, delicate hand that still clasped his own. "I thank you!" he said simply. This time there were neither exclamatory eyebrows nor smothered giggles, and Nora, forgetting that they had ever been, saw in Wolff’s action the seal and charter of her happiness. *CHAPTER XII* *NORA FORSAKES HER COUNTRY* Nora believed in unalloyed happiness. Any one with more experience would have known that unalloyed happiness, as such, does not exist. The moment when we feel ourselves supremely happy is the moment when we are most exposed to the rude shocks of fortune. We know it, and consequently our bliss is immediately overshadowed with the knowledge of its short duration. When Mrs. Ingestre and Wolff had stood together hand in hand, as though in solemn compact of friendship and affection, Nora’s heart had filled to overflowing; but already that same evening a dozen trifles, a dozen pin-pricks, came to prove to her that the storms and misadventures of the last weeks were by no means at an end. Her father who, to do him justice, never accused a fellow-creature until he was proved guilty, was none the less on the lookout for proofs of Wolff’s unsuitability, and continued distressed and grave. If at any time the conversation became in the least animated, or showed a tendency to the mildest form of hilarity, he was at once on the spot with some painfully repressing commonplace. It was as though he were constantly murmuring, "Children, remember what has happened! This is not an occasion for unseemly mirth!" and in spite of all efforts the conversation drifted into a channel which would have been considered unnecessarily depressing at a funeral.